text: Gunpowder technology is believed to have arrived in India by the mid-14th century, but could have been introduced much earlier by the Mongols, who had conquered both China and some borderlands of India, perhaps as early as the mid-13th century. The unification of a large single Mongol Empire resulted in the free transmission of Chinese technology into Mongol conquered parts of India. Regardless, it is believed that the Mongols used Chinese gunpowder weapons during their invasions of India. It was written in the Tarikh-i Firishta (1606–1607) that the envoy of the Mongol ruler Hulegu Khan was presented with a dazzling pyrotechnics display upon his arrival in Delhi in 1258. The first gunpowder device, as opposed to naphtha-based pyrotechnics, introduced to India from China in the second half of the 13th century, was a rocket called the "hawai" (also called "ban"). The rocket was used as an instrument of war from the second half of the 14th century onward, and the Delhi sultanate as well as the Bahmani Sultanate made good use of them. As a part of an embassy to India by Timurid leader Shah Rukh (1405–1447), 'Abd al-Razzaq mentioned naphtha-throwers mounted on elephants and a variety of pyrotechnics put on display. Roger Pauly has written that "while gunpowder was primarily a Chinese innovation," the saltpeter that led to the invention of gunpowder may have arrived from India, although it is also likely that it originated indigenously in China.
  Firearms known as top-o-tufak also existed in the Vijayanagara Empire of Southern India by as early as 1366. In 1368–1369, the Bahmani Sultanate may have used firearms against Vijayanagara, but these weapons could have been pyrotechnics as well. By 1442 guns had a clearly felt presence in India as attested to by historical records. From then on the employment of gunpowder warfare in India was prevalent, with events such as the siege of Belgaum in 1473 by Muhammad Shah III. Muslim and Hindu states in the south were advanced in artillery compared to the Delhi rulers of this period because of their contact with the outside world, especially Turkey, through the sea route. The south Indian kingdoms imported their gunners (topci) and artillery from Turkey and the Arab countries, with whom they had developed good relations.